eight hundred rounds per minute
by LithiumDoll
Summary: Under her fingers, metal is cool and slick with gun oil and bore solvent, smelling of patchouli and smoke. Her own brand of perfume worn so heavy sometimes it sickens her - sarah, derek, cam


**betas: **thank you oodles the combined lovely of **sabaceanbabe** and **azraelzangel  
disclaimer: ****nothing belongs to me, no profit being made  
**

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_Overall length: 196mm  
Length of barrel: 112mm  
Weight: .80kg_

From the kitchen table she can see the door to John's room, hanging slightly open now; she guesses he's over obsessively locking it against the world. Against her. Exactly what he's doing in there she doesn't know, didn't ask, but it has something to do with the machine and the slaughterhouse they used to call a bathroom.

Under her fingers, metal is cool and slick with gun oil and bore solvent, smelling of patchouli and smoke. Her own brand of perfume worn so heavy sometimes it sickens her.

Sometimes it doesn't.

The SIG is heavy and solid in her hands and in the last fifteen years that's been terrifying and reassuring and terrifying again. Now it's like peace.

Peace made of silence and the hissing whisper of a brush down a barrel; the creak of the chair when she moves. It's a bird outside the window, calling fiercely with a beautiful song born of instinctive rage.

Her mouth twists, the meditation breaks. She begins to reassemble the gun with quick efficiency and wonders if ordering take-out again will be taken by a fifteen – _sixteen_ – year old savior of man as a sign of love or neglect.

_Service ammunition is divided into full cartridges and special purpose cartridges.  
Full ammunition is used to destroy personnel_

Sometimes she catches herself staring too long; going from seeing Kyle to trying to see Kyle. She thinks he's there in the fleeting smile; not the one with the sharpened edge, the softer one in Derek's eyes that flickers and dies.

Derek doesn't say anything.

But he does stand from the slouch in the doorway and pad over to the table, sit in silence for a moment waiting to be dismissed, and then pull a Glock towards him when he isn't.

She watches as he checks the magazine, the chamber and then the barrel, waits until he looks up and meets her eyes. He stares impassively at her without speaking for long enough she decides it's a question, pushes over a cleaning rod and calls it permission.

Of course he recognizes a little peace. And of course she'll share it. To her surprise, she does it without regret.

Derek knows he's John's uncle; she's chosen to neither confirm nor deny, but she doesn't miss the new glow in John's eyes or the semi-awkward, semi-knowing segues in Derek's conversation. She doesn't want to talk about it, she's fairly sure he doesn't either. It was obvious, she guesses. John carries so much of Kyle that it mends and breaks her heart, second by second.

She imagines it's the same for Derek, who selfishly had two decades to her two days, and she's guilty and glad in turns. She never asked for Kyle's sacrifice, blames as much as thanks him, because the alternative is to blame no one, to _understand_. And she's not forgiving enough for that.

One day, she'll admit she blames the man her son will become.

Derek blames her, and perhaps John. The other, older John. Maybe he blames Kyle too. Or, maybe, he blames himself.

She wonders how any of them have anything left to hate the machines.

But they do.

Kyle is buried in the grass and one day she will take Derek there, because her world is made of promises she can't break and it's become another one. He hasn't asked again but it's between them now, a connection she doesn't want.

A cleaning rod drops with a ringing rattle and they both pretend they didn't start; politeness is important in closed environments. She bends to retrieve it and isn't surprised when Derek takes the opportunity to speak as she drops it back on the table. Maybe she's surprised he waited so long.

"You're letting him fix it." The expression is still carefully blank but he can't hide the flash of emotion in his eyes, and that's always Kyle and she smiles.

"Yes." The smile has bemused him, so she lets it stay as she returns her attention to the barrel of a junk gun she'll use the day she's tired of having two hands. She keeps it for sentimental reasons she can't remember and cleans it because it's easier than not.

Derek takes a long time to answer but she waits, suspecting he's trying for something diplomatic. "Why?"

"Because I want him to live." She raises her head again, now his is bent over the pieces in his hands. It's cruel and it's beneath her, but today perhaps she's closer to glad than guilt. "And _we_ lose the people we care about, Derek. Or didn't you notice?"

She's not sure what she's expecting. Anger. Amusement. The thousand-yard stare covering for a thousand yards more. Not a flicker of grudging respect – real and nothing to do with a faded photograph of some mother of destiny she'd punch in the head if she had the chance. "Nice."

"Nice doesn't put pancakes on the table."

He stares too long and now she wonders what he sees. Finally, the smile that's nothing like Kyle's appears. "Wait, they're meant to be _pancakes_?"

She laughs, low and short but it's all she has. "You come in, bleed all over my couch and now you're insulting my cooking?"

"I wouldn't call it cooking..."

The banter becomes anachronism and she's forgotten what comes next: pigtails get dipped in ink, a kiss or a kick. Nowhere she wants to go. She tightens her lips and shakes her head in a way that says, 'I have a comeback but I'm far too adult to use it'.

It works on John and apparently it works on Derek.

She doesn't know if it would have worked on Kyle.

_The standard cartridge used by the AK-47 is the M-43,  
Bullet weight one-two-two grains, powder weight 25 grains.  
Standard markings, fool model PS - no color._

"Physically, John has three points of commonality with Kyle Reese: one major, one minor and one superficial."

It's getting easier to look at it; skin fitting like a bad suit, hairless and somehow plastic. But it's better than the tattered remains that had hung from the skeleton, slipping and sliding, charred and so much meat.

Scrambling to the safe house after the explosion had left them all covered in remains that had never been human. John had thrown up twice and maybe she should have been horrified but mostly she'd been relieved.

Once she thought she'd rather see the real thing, see the machine. The alternative was a nightmare, now it's a lie she can swallow for a little while.

It stands beside the table, eyes on the pile of guns, forcing Sarah to look up. She leans back as a compromise. "Your point?"

"For two objects to be considered similar, there should be at least three points of major commonality."

The expression is perplexed; Sarah wonders if it's labeled that in its databank. Number eighteen: curious confusion. But she knows what's happened and John Connor better be enjoying sleeping in because, in ten minutes, she's going in there shouting. "John told you Derek recognized him."

"Yes." She thinks it's always going to be a little unnerving to receive an affirmative that has nothing behind it – no anticipation, no hope, no worry or fear. And that's how she knows she'll always recognize the metal. Always.

The machine's head cants to the side - number thirteen? - and it's just a parody on this thing that isn't quite a real girl yet. "I can't determine the similarity between John and Kyle Reese."

She thinks of honour and laughter, strength and dedication and destiny and all the ways John and Kyle are identical that can never be quantified by a computer. Sarah nods and loads the last gun. "Good."

_There are three basic models of the AK; despite a specification of six-hundred rounds per minute, extensive experience of all models, proves the full-automatic rate to be approximately eight-hundred rounds per minute._


End file.
